China’s Social Engineering Set Stage for Demographic Disaster

Couples now willingly opt out of starting families

China’s moves to combat an aging population by relaxing decades-old curbs on family size have hit an unexpected snag: many parents are no longer interested in having more babies.

The government has indicated it will scrap its policy which limits the number of children per family through tough fines — and sometimes through forced abortions and sterilizations.

The world’s most populous country introduced its one-child policy in 1979 and last tweaked it in early 2016, raising the limit to two children as the nation scrambled to rejuvenate a greying population of some 1.4 billion.